12 Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

Poet Jil l Divine outside Macy's with a

stack of books by authors with Flagstaff

ties. Photo by Ralph Schmid, NAMLM.

Flagstaff’s literary realm has changed over the last couple of years. The Northern Arizona Book Festival needed to scale back its main event. Bookmans Entertainment Exchange closed due to a roof collapse. Aradia bookstore, a long-time independent favorite, closed its doors. Some authors moved out of town. The town’s de facto poet laureate Jim Simmerman passed away. But, new changes are on the horizon. Bookmans has found a new life at the same location. The Book Festival is improving momentum and some small events have gained traction. It’s at this time we look at the town’s writing community and get a sense of what the future holds.

FlagstaFF’s Evolving litErary scEnE

WRITEDIRECTION

THE

On a chil ly Wednesday night in early November, Flagstaff bar Uptown Bil-liards turned into a lively

scene. It was not because of some wild rock show or a roof-raising Celtic band that so often plays at Uptown. Nor did it come as the result of some heated pool competition.

Instead, it arrived with a gathering of writers participating in a rare form: cockta i l napkin poetry. Hosted by poet and long-time Flagstaff resident Jill Divine, the notion of con-vening to jot poems on napkins drew a crowd of 25 people—each taking turns to share their little gems of lyrical wonder.

In a cocktail napkin poem by Stanley Barnes, a sense of mystery and revelation raise from the stanzas captured

by pressing pen to the not-always-easy-to-write-on napkin: “She always forgets her keys/I’ll never forget the cool touch/of her hand on the small of my back/at night/before I sleep.”

Divine explained the inspiration behind Cocktail Napkin Poetry Night, which she hopes will continue and will join other kinds of writing workshops at Uptown and other locales. “I always tell my students that you can write poetry

anywhere,” said Divine, who has taught poetry at Coconino Community Col-lege since 2001. “You can

even write it on a napkin, back of an envelope or wherever. I like the cocktail napkin form because it’s short. It’s a glimpse into a slice of life that can be insightful or funny. There’s a quality you can get in a little tiny poem that can be really telling about the situation you’re

By Seth Muller

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14 Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

Jill Divine has some fun with a bounty of books.

Photo by Ralph Schmid, NAMLM.

watching or the situation you’re in or the situation you know.”

She added, “Poetry can be daunt-ing. People can be seized by anxiety when they try to write a poem. They think, ‘I’m not a poet.’ But for some reason, the cocktail napkin and pen gives them freedom. It’s almost like they’re doodling words. They can write in a more relaxed frame of mind.”

The cocktail napkin poem carries a notion of accessibility—of poetry for everyone. And the gathering of more than two dozen people at a bar in the middle of the week shows that Flagstaff is a community with an interest in the literary realm. The community has long embraced writing, books and literature

in a way that is not seen in many other places. It has been home to the Northern Arizona Book Festival, to multiple independent and national booksellers and publishers and presses. It also fea-tures Northern Arizona University and Coconino Community College. Is the hometown of the renowned Outlander series creator Diana Gabaldon. Among its residents are award-winning poets, novelists and nonfiction authors.

While some have lamented the loss of Aradia Bookstore, Starrlight Books remains a downtown fixture. While many struggled with the months Bookmans Entertainment Exchange was shut down, it has reopened with a revamped store. While the Northern

"I think (the Flagstaff literary scene) is coming alive in a way that it has not been. I think we're starting to get some momentum going." - Poet James Jay

15jan11 namlm.com

Bob Oldfather, founder of Bookmans

Entertainment Exchange, celebrated the

recent reopening of the Flagstaff store.

Photo by Seth Muller, NAMLM.

Arizona Book Festival took a hit with loss of grant funding in the wake of the recession, a dedicated board is working hard to bring it back.

The Third PlaceEarly December arrives and Book-

mans—set back from Milton Road in a shopping plaza it shares with Hastings, Michael’s and other stores—is a flurry of activity. The sound of saws and hammers fills the inside, as workers push to get the shelves and fixtures ready for a Dec. 16 opening day. The store has been shut down for 11 months after a snowstorm collapsed the roof and decimated the used-book inventory.

The return of Bookmans was feeling like a major holiday for the

employees, who remained on the payroll as the store rebuilt inventory and moved toward a successful reopening. The staff members smiled often, laughed easily, even as they loaded tons of books onto shelves to ready for the big day.

Among the people working on the final push to reopen is Bob Oldfather. He founded Bookmans in Tucson and the second store he opened—of six total stores—was the Flagstaff location. For a year or two shy of 25 years, Bookmans has been an integrated part of the Flagstaff community.

“I think there are several things going on with Bookmans and Flagstaff,” Oldfather said. “It’s part of the commu-nity. It doesn’t take long for our inven-tory to reflect the community, since we

get the inventory from the community. I can’t offer a better selection or even a better deal than Amazon. But what I can offer is a community space. We’re a community space that just so happens to sell books. This is a ‘third place.’ We have work, home and then we have that third place. It can be the gym or bar or somewhere like that. We’re trying to be a third place for people.”

In being that third place where people can spend time—without a pressure to buy or to do much more than hang out, Bookmans also sees itself as a gathering place for authors and lovers of books. “We have author readings here,” noted Desiree Ducharme, the assistant manager of Bookmans’ Flagstaff loca-tion. “We invite local authors to have

16 Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine

Kate Beles (lef t) and Desiree Ducharme are both advocates of local

literature. Beles works on the Northern Arizona Book Festival and for

Bookmans. Ducharme manages the Flagstaff Bookmans.

Photo by Seth Muller, NAMLM.

their events here. We have people like Tony Norris, who shares oral traditions and folk music. And, we have big names like Dorothy Alison, Evan Handler and Diana Gabaldon. And, along with that, we provide a nice, quiet warm space for authors to do their thing. Whether it’s a writing circle … or just coming here to write.”

Bookmans also joins a number of other businesses who support the literary arts in the community. Most notably, the bookselling company has donated hundreds of books over the years to libraries, schools and nonprofit organizations. Further, it has provided money to the Northern Arizona Book Festival and other literary efforts.

In CelebrationAs the month of April nears, lov-

ers of books and literature in Flagstaff look forward to the annual Northern Arizona Book Festival. Since the late 1990s, the Northern Arizona Book Festival has worked to bring numerous authors together for a singular event that celebrates the written word. The money raised from the event goes to help literary initiatives in the Flagstaff area. The book festival has brought such noted authors as Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Rita Dove, Rick Moody, E. Annie Proulx, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), poet laureate Billy Collins and famed poet Robert Bly.

The festival reached a high point with its 10th annual event in 2007, breaking attendance records with Lem-ony Snicket at the Orpheum Theatre, hosting a rock ‘n’ roll night at Charly’s in the Weatherford Hotel and filling up three days of events. However, the last couple of years have proved a challenge, as the economy impacted grant funding. A current eight-member board is looking to turn that around, beginning with this year.

“I would say that we’re getting prepped for a renaissance with the Northern Arizona Book Festival,” noted Kate Beles, who serves as a board member. “We did have some setbacks. We have needed to seek corporate spon-sors and look at new places for money. We have a great board … and we have a whole new approach of vetting authors.

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We want to make sure everything we do at the Northern Arizona Book Festival—via a democratic, educated process—is of the highest quality.”

The 14th annual book festival will take place for one day, April 16, at the Coconino Center for the Arts. It features a number of up-and-comers, such as Jerry Gabriel, author of Drowned Boy and winner of the 2008 Mary McCarthy Prize in short fiction and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist. Also appearing this year is Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which has received much literary buzz.

Next year marks the 15th annual book festival, and the board members are looking to go bigger and better, expanding the event into a two-day festival and working to bring more nationally renowned writers to Flagstaff. It’s become a labor of love for everyone involved in the event. “The Book Fes-tival is important on so many levels,” Beles said. “In a town of this size, it is important to be able to have access to quality art … And if you want access to a larger literary community, you can get that through a book festival.”

Literary LitmusWhile Bookmans returns, the

book festival looks to grow and events like cocktail nap-kin poetry readings are happening, literary-minded people in town wonder how Flagstaf f compares to other places in the country when it comes to being a bookish and writer-friendly community.

Flagstaff poet James Jay lived in Missoula, Mont. for a time where, as he says, people joked that “you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a writer.” A robust creative writing program at the Uni-versity of Montana helped fuel this, and literary events and gatherings often overflowed with people. Jay recalled a poetry reading by Missoula

favorite Mark Gibbons, where a hundred people turned out in January during minus-zero-degree weather to hear him read.

Still, from Jay’s perspective, Flag-staff could be moving toward a more robust literary scene itself. “I think it is coming alive in a way that it has not been,” he noted. “I think we’re starting to get some momentum going. I see it with things like the cocktail napkin poetry night and with the event I did at Charly’s [for the release of Jay’s The Journeymen] awhile back … And, I would agree that we have more of a rogue writer community, people and events like the book festival that are not attached to a school and are not limited by budget or how much money comes from the state. We’re the kind of community that can host an event or a reader series for the hell of it. And that seems to set Flagstaff apart.”